Reuters has a story on the continuing shift from the big f-you sized monsters to high mileage sedans.
Excerpts:
Honda's Civic and Accord and Toyota's Camry and Corolla sedans outsold Ford's F-Series pickup truck. It was the first time a sedan outsold the perennial Ford bestseller since 1991.
"It is a watershed month. It's a sign of the times,"
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if they are switching to more efficient cars, we should expect demand (and, hence, price, when supply is constant or declining) to go up.
Jevons Paradox
In economics, the Jevons Paradox is an observation made by William Stanley Jevons, that as technological improvements increase the efficiency with which a resource is used, total consumption of that resource tends to increase, rather than decrease. It is historically called the Jevons Paradox as it ran counter to popular intuition. However, the situation is well understood in modern economics. In addition to reducing the amount needed for a given output, improved efficiency lowers the relative cost of using a resource - which increases demand. Overall resource use increases or decreases depending on which effect ( ... )
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...are people switching to more efficient cars, or are the truck/suv buyers simply sitting on the sideline, postponing their purchases?
Well, it does say that purchases have gone up for the Japanese car companies. Unless the increase is attributable to new consumers in the market, it would indeed seem as if would-be truck buyers are opting for more efficient cars.
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a better indicator would be total vehicles sold (TVS - cars+trucks+suvs). if TVS is nearly unchanged, but a larger percentage of them are small cars, this would be switch to smaller cars. otherwise, it is possible that automobile buyers are simply switching manufacturers.
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